Luciano Pavarotti

Italiantenor Luciano Pavarotti was an only child, born in Modena, Italy on 12 October 1935. His father was a baker and a singer, and his mother a cigar factory worker. Early influences included exposure to the recordings of Caruso, Gigli, Martinelli and Schipa, and singing in a localchurchchoir. At the age of nineteen he began serious study in Modena, with tenor Arrigo Polo and later with Ettore Campogalliani. During the 1950s he gave a few recitals locally, none of them paid, and decided to give up singing when a nodule developed on his vocal chords. The nodule disappeared and, as the singer related in his autobiography, '... everything I had learned came together with my naturalvoice to make the sound I had been struggling so hard to achieve'.

His operadébut came in April 1961, singing Rodolfo in La bohème at Reggio Emilia. His US début was in February 1965 with the Greater Miami Opera, and shortly afterwards, he first appeared at La Scala in La bohème, but it was in 1972, in Donizetti's La fille du régiment at the Met in New York, that the singer made his major breakthrough leading to regular TV broadcasts and recordings.

There were difficulties too in his career. He was dubbed 'King of Cancellations' due to his unreliable nature, and was banned for life from the Lyric Opera of Chicago when he walked away from a seasonpremière less than a fortnight before the start of rehearsals. There was also an acrimonious split with Herbert Breslin, Pavarotti's long-term manager, resulting in Breslin's 2004 book The King & I, which was critical of Pavarotti's personal conduct, his acting and his ability to read music.

Pavarotti died in the early hours of 6 September 2007 at home in Modena, Italy, aged 71.